Philomena – Scene 1
MARTIN: What did she say to you?
PHILOMENA: She said you were a journalist and you were trying
to manipulate me and I should be careful what I say to you. And
she gave me this.
MARTIN: Do you want me to open it? (He opens it.) It’s a
contract... signed by you in 1955. (Reading from it) They’ve
highlighted part of it... (Quotes) ‘I hereby relinquish full claim
forever to my said child(PHILOMENA takes up the passage, quoting verbatim from
memory.)
PHILOMENA (Taking over)-said child Anthony Lee, and I further
undertake never to attempt to see, interfere with or make any claim
to the said child at any future time...’(cont’d) I’ll never find him.
MARTIN
: If they coerced you in any way to sign that piece of
paper we can challenge them legally.
PHILOMENA: No-one forced me Martin. I signed of my own free
will.
MARTIN: Funny isn’t it, how every piece of paper that might be
able to help you has been destroyed. But guess what? The one
piece of paper designed to stop you from finding him has been
lovingly preserved. God in His infinite wisdom decided to spare
that from the flames.
PHILOMENA
: I signed it because I believed I’d committed a
terrible sin Martin, and I had to be punished. And... what made it
so much worse, was that I enjoyed it.
MARTIN: What?
PHILOMENA: The sex. Oh, it was wonderful. I thought I was
floating on air. He was so handsome and the way he held me in his
arms and - well I didn’t even know I had a clitoris Martin.
MARTIN: Really?
PHILOMENA: And after I had the sex, I thought anything that
feels so lovely must be wrong.
MARTIN: Fucking Catholics.
PHILOMENA: I spent thirty years as a nurse, I’ve heard worse
than that.
MARTIN: It’s just that, why would God bestow on us a sexual
desire which he then wants us to resist? Is it some weird game that
he’s invented to alleviate the boredom of being omnipotent?
Baffles me... and I thought I was pretty clever.
PHILOMENA: Well maybe you’re not.